Passion for work: Relationships with general and maladaptive personality traits and work-related outcomes

Abstract It has been argued that passion can take both harmonious and obsessive forms (Vallerand et al., 2003). This paper examines this dualistic model of passion specifically for passion in relation to work and contributes to this literature in two ways. First, an extensive set of both general (Big Five) and maladaptive (PID-5) personality traits are related to harmonious passion (HP) and obsessive passion (OP) for work. Second, HP and OP are linked to three relevant work-related outcomes, namely job satisfaction, burnout and job performance. In Study 1 (N = 213), a distinctive pattern of relationships with general and maladaptive traits was found for HP and OP for work, although the relative importance of maladaptive traits to understand work passion was not higher for OP, as compared to HP. Further, both HP and OP were positively related to job satisfaction even after controlling for Big Five traits. Only HP was related (negatively) to burnout. In Study 2 (N = 208), only HP remained significantly related to job satisfaction after controlling for OP. Moreover, HP was positively related to job performance as rated by supervisors (more specifically contextual and adaptive performance). Implications of these findings for the dualistic model of passion are discussed.